fter two years as Alameda County's only full-time probate judge, Sandra Margulies has more than settled into the routine. She's garnered quite a reputation for handling a calendar that tops 200 cases each week while still practicing good people skills in a court that at times can get very emotional.
The probate calendar includes everything from executing wills and trusts involving bickering survivors to working out guardianship for kids who lost parents to death, advanced disease or drugs. Margulies says the challenge comes in moving the cases along while still making sure everyone -- especially the children -- have a chance to speak.
"We have a number of cases in here that can get very tense and emotional," says Margulies. "Even when the parties have attorneys, often they want to say something for themselves."
A total of 2,938 probate cases were filed in Alameda County in the 1998-99 fiscal year, according to the court. That's a slight increase -- 143 cases -- from the previous year. Not all are cut-and-dried.
Often, those who try their hand in her courtroom without a lawyer's help fail to handle the required paperwork adequately. Some of the most difficult pro per cases are those involving guardianship of a child. To move those cases forward, Margulies helped set up a once-a-month pro per clinic with the Alameda County Bar Association, where attorneys and paralegals volunteer to address questions.
"Despite an increasingly busy schedule, [Judge Margulies] and her staff have been able to set up a regular clinic," says Bari Robinson, executive director of the bar association and of its volunteer legal services program. "The guardianship proceedings, especially, can be very intimidating for a child, but she works magic with them and makes them feel at home."
Crosby, Heafey, Roach & May partner Betty Orvell, who chairs the bar association's estate planning and probate committee, also praises Margulies for taking the time to check with kids, conservatees and others about a situation.
In one guardianship hearing for a little girl whose parents could no longer take care of her, Margulies invited the child to sit in the witness box so they could talk. The little girl got out her crayons and colored while the judge asked her about school and home life. Then Margulies dealt with everybody else, Orvell says.
Margulies often arranges to bring a child and the new guardians back after six months to ensure the transition is going smoothly.
Probate law is not her first area of interest. Margulies passed the bar in 1977 and immediately went to work in the Alameda County district attorney's office, working eight years before Gov. George Deukmejian named her to the San Leandro-Hayward Municipal Court. He elevated her to superior court three years later.
But after years in law-and-motion and other stints working civil and criminal cases, Margulies says she enjoys probate, in part because of the small and sort of cozy probate bar. Margulies says the attorneys know each other and act a little more professionally toward each other as a result.
Margulies usually handles all cases in Northern Alameda County, and says she hopes to stay on in probate for another year. The cases she doesn't touch: those on the Pleasanton calendar -- handled by Judge George Hernandez Jr. -- and those brought by probate attorney Bart Schenone, her husband.
"His cases are heard in Hayward by another judge," she says. "He does his thing, and I do mine."
